The vagaries of hotel booking sites

In one place I am going I cannot find any well known hotel chain so instead of booking direct to get loyalty points with the hotel I thought I would look at these hotel agency sites particularly those that give some benefits such as airline points etc.

Interestingly I ended up on one site and looked at pricing for the same hotel and dates using my pc and my ipad. To my surprise the prices were different.This seemed odd as I was looking at the quotes simultaneously

Is this dynamic pricing?

I found this irritating. Is this what is known as dynamic pricing?

The only thing different was the IP address. but it was 2 computers. I suppose I was logged in on both so the system could see it was the same “logee” looking on 2 computers. The prices were only a few pounds apart but why any difference at all?

Conclusion

I suppose it shows the vagaries of the system and that pricing is so variable; whether you use a hotel website, a web trawling or price comparison site. Many sites will all take commission and it seems this is complex and so prices are very likely to vary from computer to computer as well as minute to minute.

Again I feel frustrated as a user but that I simply have to accept this. Do my research and press “buy” accepting that had I searched a few minutes later or even on a different computer I might have got a different price.